Five Technology Innovations Shared

Anchin Construction & Development Forum

February 9, 2017

At the 2017 Anchin Construction & Development Forum, Mark Boekenheide of Hudson Yards, Jonathan Drescher of The Durst Organization, James Hannah of Bright Power, AJ Pires of Alloy, Peter Rosenthal of Savanna and Mitchel Simpler of Jaros, Baum & Bolles discussed the exciting and often risky topic of innovation as it relates to construction, design and development in and around NYC.

Check out our infographic summarizing these points or the full article below:

Here are a few of the inventive solutions discussed that are being tested and/or implemented.

Hudson Yards is creating a vacuum system to take trash underground for disposal. While the system works well for residential tenants, it doesn’t make sense for office and retail tenants… yet.

Power resilience is a leading topic in engineering innovation right now. Instead of just putting in a backup generator, more buildings are seeing co-gen systems being installed in order to provide backup power and energy sharing.

Engineers are working on new elevator systems, including a twin elevator system, where two independent elevators would run independent of each other in the same elevator shaft. That will create more efficiency in moving people, while using less rentable space.

The developers at Hudson Yards are also working on a system that will utilize information for how to reach people who are in the complex at any given time. For instance, when a retail location wants to drive people into their shop during a slow time, a “flash sale” notification can go out to all of the people who are currently in the building.

Smart buildings are coming that will do everything from recognizing when a tenant needs to order groceries to ordering an Uber with a vocal command.

While implementing newly innovated solutions is one way to improve the efficiency of construction, design and development, this is just one of the topics that were covered at the forum. For more information about the event and its other sessions, check out our recap here.